


In Which Starscream Summons A Demon

by fascinationex



Series: transformers fics by fascinationex [18]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dragon Age Fusion, Backstory, Blood Magic, Demonic Possession, Fantastic Racism, Gen, How Starscream Got Exiled From The Dalish, Kirkwall (Dragon Age), Murder, One Shot, TF characters & DA setting, seriously quite violent, violence against everyone
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 10:55:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,886
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22968835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fascinationex/pseuds/fascinationex
Summary: So how does a nice dalish blood mage like Starscream end up in a place like Kirkwall, anyway?[Starscream makes poor choices and then, in them, exceeds all expectations.]
Relationships: Skyfire & Starscream
Series: transformers fics by fascinationex [18]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1311599
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	In Which Starscream Summons A Demon

**Author's Note:**

> I've got a couple of fics planned in a dragon age fusion AU. this is Starscream's backstory: why is he all alone in the city of chains, when he's a dalish elf who probably has a clan? _well._

Winter’s cloak had fallen away, and Sundermount was new and green again. It was still cold, and there was frost even on her lowest slopes every morning, but the plants were unfurling, all bright and excited for growing. Meltwater dripped, birds warbled and trilled, shades lay quiet—and Starscream’s little wisp noticed something. 

There was a human woman up on a tiny ledge. She’d made her way between the perilous paths and ancient cemeteries, scrounging for elfroot and embrium. She had travelled all alone, which was just perfect for Starscream. 

He’d only promised Ambition the one. 

He cast a force magic spell with a wave of his free hand. It wasn’t his strongest school of magic, but it was still smooth and effortless, and it closed around her thick human limbs like steel shackles. 

“Don’t panic,” he said, swaggering out from behind an outcropping. “It won’t do you any good.” 

The human woman did, in fact, panic. Her skirts rustled as she tried to kick and squirm. The bands of force magic restraining her had upset her, and it was clear that the sight of his staff filled her with unreasoning terror. 

That was a stupid shemlen conceit. They were scared of magic, of all things. They may as well have been frightened of the fires in their grates. 

She wasn’t especially pretty, he thought critically. Dark haired, blue eyed. Probably a Marcher native. Where the People were fine and elegant—and Starscream knew himself to be a particularly lovely exemplar, with his large red-brown eyes and handsome symmetry—humans were all tall, unfinished looking, and almost always… _weak_

“Blood magic,” she spat. Her face was scrunched up into an ugly expression of dismay, and her voice came thick. 

“ _Force_ magic,” he corrected, twirling his staff idly. It hissed as it cut the air. The enchanted ironbark seeped a sickly corruption into the air, wafting like smoke. He no longer noticed such a thing, but her blue eyes hadn’t strayed from it. Those were sort of nice, he thought, in a small and human way. Their blue was like cornflowers, bluer than the sky. 

He waved a hand. 

She sat, because the pressure of his force magic made her, shoving down upon her until her knees buckled. He ignored the pained and startled yelp that came from her. 

“You’re a maleficar,” she said. Her face had gone red and blotchy, and her eyes were so wet they seemed to wobble. 

Shemlen liked to say these things—obviously such words had meaning to _them_ , but to Starscream they were just noises. He wasn’t sure what ‘maleficar’ actually meant: if it was another word for ‘blood mage’, or if it just meant any mage who went about his business outside of one of those dirty little mage prisons. It seemed as though their people used it for ‘mage doing something that I don’t like’, which was essentially anything magical anyway. 

“To you, undoubtedly,” he said, breezily. “Now, be quiet, and I shall show you some blood magic in just a moment.”

She started crying in earnest then, which was satisfying for about thirty seconds and then it was just _loud_. 

He really had to learn a sleep spell one day. Not today, though. He pulled his knife from its sheath at the small of his back and nicked the outside of his wrist. 

Starscream did not need a lot of blood up on the slopes of Sundermount. The Veil was thin all across this part of the Free Marches—so thin, in fact, that he could often hear the whispers of spirits and demons even when he didn’t sleep. 

He hadn’t asked anyone else if they could hear them too. His “proclivities” weren’t well-regarded within the clan, and he had come to expect that any discussion of the truth about creatures of the Fade would result in …conflict. But he suspected. 

His blood hit the ground in tiny little drops. He could almost _feel_ the enormous, crackling body of Ambition rising behind him. It was a behemoth of light and heat, shouldering up from behind the Veil, moving ponderously, like the air was as thick as molasses. 

He inhaled. His chest expanded. The world was bright, his lungs were full, and he felt like he was breathing mana. 

Ambition whispered softly, but not terribly intelligibly. That didn’t matter—Starscream knew what he’d agreed to. 

“Starscream? I thought I heard—” 

That… was not the voice of Ambition. 

He turned his head. The clan’s halla master, with his tall lean body and fluffy white-blond hair, was usually a welcome sight. It was just about the last thing he wanted to see just now. 

“Skyfire,” he said, scowling thunderously. 

He knew right then that this would be messy. 

Skyfire couldn’t fail to notice the sobbing shem. She was loud and she was shaking. 

“What’s she doing here?” Skyfire’s sharp eyes glanced over the woman’s things—the basket of embrium, the worn cloak. Then he glanced at Starscream. Concern and grief furrowed his brow and contorted the complex horns of Ghilan’nain’s vallaslin across his forehead. 

“Starscream…” There was a short pause. “I know you don’t… _like_ them, but she’ll definitely have told someone where she’s going.” 

“I did,” blurted the woman. 

“There, you see.” 

Skyfire probably couldn’t feel the weight of half-finished magic in the air, and he undoubtedly couldn’t feel Ambition. Starscream could, though. Ambition wasn’t a patient spirit, and its anticipation grew with each second it was forced to wait. Experience told Starscream that pretty soon it would become, ah, _restless_. 

Starscream was confident that if he absolutely had to, he could hold back Ambition indefinitely. He wouldn’t have agreed otherwise. And he would, if he thought the alternative was a completely uncontrolled Pride demon thrust through the Veil. 

Especially right next to Skyfire. Whatever particular skill it took to care for their halla with endless patience and dedication, it certainly wouldn’t help him against Ambition. 

Starscream clenched his jaw. “And so?” 

“Even if you do not… care for her,” Skyfire said, “hurting her will bring danger to the clan.” 

“She is trespassing,” Starscream pointed out reasonably. “So she was already a danger. Best take care of it.” 

The woman flinched. “I didn’t know—” 

“Shut up, shem,” said Starscream in exactly the same reasonable tone. 

“—trespassing, it’s not your mountain, I didn’t—” She was blubbering. Ugh. 

Starscream took another step toward her, which had the dual effect of making her stop talking and causing Ambition’s increasing irritation to calm slightly. 

Skyfire’s mouth, a soft thing usually more accustomed to smiling than scowling, thinned in a rare expression of frustration. “The humans will come looking—and when they don’t find her, they’ll ask questions of us, instead. If you kill her, we court disaster. It doesn’t matter if she was trespassing. You must let her go.” 

“The shems, if they bother to look for a wayward little wretch like this—” he patted the side of her face, quite gently, but she flinched back from him anyway, wiggling away on her behind. His hand came away wet, because the silly little thing had been crying, “—will find that Sundermount is full of the restless dead, deepstalkers, giant spiders and shades. Besides,” he added, more prosaically, “if I let her go, I’d still have to find some kind of payment. Someone’s got to pay up, and it certainly won’t be me.” 

Skyfire shifted on his feet. “Payment for what?” 

Starscream straightened to his full, very unimpressive, height and turned back to Skyfire. He didn’t need to answer—his hand was already covered in blood. There was one short, neat cut over his left wrist. 

Skyfire closed his eyes. “Starscream, we’ve talked about…” 

“Relax. It’s just a shem.”

“… _blood magic_. I was going to say: we’ve talked about blood magic.” 

‘We’ve talked’ was overstating it—from Starscream’s point of view, various members of the clan had talked _at him_ about blood magic, and he had been expected to do precisely no talking on the topic at all. 

Ambition chose that moment to heave against Starscream’s restraint. He ground his teeth. He was stronger than any simple demon of the Fade. 

But it wasn’t a good idea to hold a conversation, hold the spell keeping the human still _and_ hold the demon, so their time was up. 

“Return to your herd, Skyfire,” he said. “This is dangerous to leave half done.” 

Skyfire hesitated, looking between the human and Starscream. “Starscream, she has—I don’t know, she has friends, a family, feelings like the rest of us—” 

Starscream scoffed. As usual, Skyfire was of the opinion that everyone else’s feelings mattered more than Starscream’s. What about Starscream’s feelings, which dictated that he should complete the summoning and seek his reward in fair exchange? 

Ambition was beginning to throw its weight around—metaphorically, but Starscream felt it as though it was nearly a physical thing. The magic swelled. His breath was hot. 

No. His will was indomitable. He straightened up. 

“Skyfire,” he repeated, allowing some of the strain to show in his voice. “You need to leave.” Or else he was going to have to complete the spell right in front of Skyfire, and _that_ was really going to end badly. 

Skyfire was Dalish, he wasn’t a stranger to death. He wasn’t even a stranger to the occasional need to kill a shem or two, just for the safety of the clan. He had to kill his own halla, occasionally, which seemed to cause him much more distress. 

But Starscream doubted he’d ever seen a human become possessed against their will before. It wasn’t for the faint of heart. 

“Starscream,” Skyfire said again, in a soft, throbbing tone. Starscream knew better than to turn and look at his face: his eyes would be big and sad, his little crow’s feet (from laughing, of course), would be deepened by the knit in his brows, and Starscream would start scrambling for a way to prevent the inevitable. 

Skyfire wasn’t going to listen to him. Starscream couldn’t risk multitasking while juggling a pride demon for much longer. 

He reached out toward the woman. Her blue eyes went wide, her face went white, and her pupils contracted to tiny dots. 

_Because_ he wasn’t looking at Skyfire, however, Starscream didn’t see it coming. 

Skyfire was not a trained mage, but he had thought that _every_ member of the clan knew better than to interrupt a casting. They weren’t shems, frightened of magic and locking up what scraps of knowledge they had. 

But Skyfire’s hand clenched around the cut on his wrist, just as the cloud of blood began to rise between Starscream and the shemlen. 

“Starscream,” he said, gravely, “you have to stop, you can’t—” 

Starscream flinched.

His control… slipped. 

The demon, so eager, rushed to the nearest vessel.

Skyfire screamed. 

“No!” howled Starscream, twisting his magic reflexively, trying to close the channel across the Veil, but it was already too late—he had promised the spirit a mortal form. Ambition didn’t care whose body it took. Once released into a body, it would not give it up for the promise of some other, different body. They were all the same to Ambition. Starscream couldn't help himself: “ _No!_ ” he cried again. 

_No, no, no._

But there was no amount of "no" that would stop Ambition now.

His cries were drowned out by Skyfire’s screaming, which just got louder and more ragged.

"Starscream, help me—!" he gasped, between one broken scream and the next. 

Starscream knew he could do nothing now. It hurt to know. It was already too late.

It looked like a seizure, until Skyfire’s skin _bubbled_. He was even less fit a host than a mortal mage. Starscream could hear the crack of bone in time with the contortion of his body, and all he could do was watch with wide eyes. 

Skin swelled and sagged, forming in strange lumps as the natural growth and healing faculties of Skyfire’s body responded to the massive surge of Fade energies. 

The screaming stopped abruptly, cut off in an uncertain gurgle. Starscream wasn’t sure if that meant it was over, or if something associated with Skyfire’s voice had just—snapped. He swallowed hard. 

Skyfire straightened, finally. He was taller. Wider. More… misshapen. A pile of white blond hair still spilt across his hideously deformed forehead. His skin had stretched as his skull had expanded and cracked, and where the skin had stretched, so had the vallaslin; it was strange, diffuse and faded now. 

The stupid shem was screaming, too, but she didn’t stop when Skyfire did. 

Her cries were pathetic. What was she whimpering about? What had _she_ lost?

Starscream clenched his force magic like a fist. The sound of her bones cracking didn’t move him, but it also didn’t shut her up. She thrashed and screamed louder, hard and helpless.

He grunted, annoyed, then reversed his staff grip and struck her across the face with it's blunt side, away from the blade. It impacted her skull with a dull, meaty _thump_ and then her skull impacted the ground with a similar sound. 

She didn’t scream after that. 

“Well,” said Starscream, clenching his shaking hands tightly around the grip of his staff. He spun it back around, rested it point-down on the dirt. His knuckles were white, and his grip was so tight it hurt. He wasn’t sure if he was afraid or numb with shock or just plain enraged. “This did not go to plan.” 

He backed up a step, thinking of all the ways loosing a demon like this could go badly. The urgency of his own self-preservation warred with the knowledge that it was— _had been_ —Skyfire. 

Starscream’s heart thumped, hard and fierce in the cold cage of his ribs. His lungs felt like they were full of icy metal. It was _Skyfire_. 

_Don’t let it see you’re afraid_. 

He tried to examine it objectively. Skyfire was… even if he could keep him functioning long enough to bring him back to the Keeper, there was no way that the mess Ambition had made of him could be fixed. His _skull_ had been reshaped. Creators only knew what had happened to his brain in there. 

He stopped backing up. All he was doing was backing himself into a corner. 

He could kill Ambition. Destroy the host, send it back to the Fade in shreds.

His hands steadied, finally. 

“You have fulfilled your part in our little bargain, though,” said the abomination. Starscream was glad that the ruined voice didn’t even sound like Skyfire anymore. Not even a little bit. 

He exhaled slowly. His breath came out evenly. He’d summoned the demon for a reason. 

It was _Skyfire_. 

His heart throbbed in his chest, a relentless drum beat of grief and guilt and anger. He could feel it pounding behind his eyes, in his ears. He blinked hard. _Quiet, you stupid, faithless thing,_ he thought. 

“I have,” said Starscream flatly. His voice didn't shake. “Show me what I asked for.” 

Skyfire’s hands spread, slow, jerky and ungraceful, into a mocking gesture of welcome. Starscream lifted his chin, set his jaw, and walked right into its perverse embrace. 

Skyfire’s body was hot, like walking on rock that had been baking in the summer heat all day and which now burned. Pressed close to his physical form, Starscream could feel the twitches and jerks in his muscles, half-controlled by a demon unused to physical shape. 

It kissed him, on the chin first, and then his mouth. Starscream shuddered. Its burning breath hit his mouth and his nose, blistered his throat, flooded his mind— 

He lost time like that, standing there for what felt like a geological age, the earth shaping and reforming beneath his bare feet. Magic drifted through his head like smoke, revealing its secrets, inserting itself in his muscle memory, insidious and formless... 

It probably took only a minute, really, but time passed differently once you were practically wearing the Veil. When he withdrew he was shaking. Ambition's knowledge settled, oily and not particularly pleasant, in his mind. 

It was exactly what he’d wanted. His mouth tasted bitter, like burnt seeds, like poison. 

He exhaled slowly. Smoke drifted from his mouth, straight up into the sky. He watched Ambition through the haze. His eyes were hooded, his mind spinning behind them.

There was only one sure way to learn new blood magic. The entire school was dangerous, and mistakes in learning were very often deadly. One had to learn each new magic, whole and complete, from the mind of a creature who knew it. 

Blood magic was not popular among mortals, and demons… charged high prices. Some higher than others. Apparently.

Starscream stepped back from it. His hand was still tight around his staff. He wondered distantly who would care for the halla now, without Skyfire. There would be another, he supposed. But Skyfire was the best. 

Ambition had done nothing wrong, by its own standards. It was a spirit. It behaved according to its nature. Being angry with it was like being angry with the wind. 

But he was. The fear had passed, and now all that was left was to be angry. It was a dull, low-burning anger, starting from his guts and spreading fast and hot through his veins. 

“Was it worth it?” Skyfire’s mouth asked, through his contorted lips.

Starscream clutched his staff. He had barely even made the decision before he was moving. He twisted the staff and shoved the blade through its neck. Blood ran like water, cheap and fast, dribbling down the gleaming blade and splattering over Skyfire’s clothes. It soaked and spread, darkening as it seeped.

Ambition's head sagged grotesquely on his damaged neck, but it wouldn't stop it.

With his off hand, Starscream made a fist, squeezing tighter and tighter as the blood inside that precious, so-familiar body boiled. Ambition made an unearthly noise.

The abomination jerked and twitched. 

“ _You_ ,” snarled Ambition, in a voice that was nothing but a terrible hoarse gurgle, echoed monstrously from the Fade. It reached for Starscream with Skyfire’s hands. 

Starscream bared his teeth. For a moment they felt like silver knives in his skull, like sharp, vicious things, and he could almost feel the crush of Ambition’s stolen flesh between them. He could almost taste the hot rusty gush of it, nearly smell the raw meat. His fingers twitched to sink into the bulbous, ugly deformities it had produced on Skyfire’s body— 

“Me,” he agreed. 

He wrung it out then, blood spilling from Ambition’s mouth and ears, from its pores and its rolling eyes. It was a messy death, but his friend wasn’t inside anymore. All he was doing was destroying the host. 

Skyfire’s abused body hit the dirt with a thump. 

The little mountain plateau went quiet. The birds had long stopped singing. The human woman was quiet and still. All Starscream could hear was the rushing thunder of his blood and the rasp of his own breathing. 

His shoulders heaved for a few seconds, rising and falling with each breath. 

“You idiot!” he yelled, and he turned and kicked Skyfire’s cooling body in the side, making it jerk, ugly and lifeless. No. _No!_ He hadn't wanted— “You _idiot_ ,” he repeated, in a voice that sounded ragged even to him. “Why would you—you _ruined_... You _stupid_ —” 

The human made a soft, groaning noise. Starscream stopped castigating Skyfire's corpse and looked over at her. Her eyes were unfocused, pupils different sizes, her face coloured and swollen on one side. She was coming around. 

His pretty face contorted into a cruel sneer. He couldn’t believe she’d survived. _Her_. 

And _Skyfire_ had— 

He felt—wild, crazed, fevered. He was absolutely incandescent with rage. 

“You,” he said to her, gesturing with his hand. "How _dare_ you—"

The spell he’d traded for worked perfectly, drawing from the thready, angry thump of his heart down his veins. The bleeding from the cut he had made in his arm was beginning to slow. The shem didn’t want to obey him. Oh, she very much did not want to obey. But she bent to his will and when he gestured her onto her feet she started to move, making small pained noises as she struggled vainly against him. Starscream could only imagine what it would be like to exercise such a power upon someone who was less certain in their resistance. 

The shem woman got to her feet. His force magic had broken her leg, and it took her two tries. She stood, finally, with a sound of mixed pain and terror. 

Starscream watched her and felt nothing but scorn.

She cried. Snivelling thing.

“Quiet,” Starscream ordered. She fell silent. “Good. Now—kill yourself.” 

Her struggling renewed, fiercer than ever. His will was stronger.

She got her work knife from her belt. 

She didn’t make a sound, because he had told her to be quiet. Starscream watched her until the end, and then he was left alone on the mountainside with two new corpses and a horrible, sick feeling in his guts. 

He started shaking then, hands trembling as the natural rush of stress and danger drained off. His knees unhinged. 

He looked over at Skyfire’s body, so misshapen and contorted. It had been an accident. And it had been Skyfire’s stupid fault. 

He doubted their Keeper would see it that way. No. Starscream would be... Not even exiled. Executed. He couldn’t cover up either what had happened with the Veil up here—Keeper Windblade would know in a hot second—or that Skyfire had gone missing. 

He stumbled back to his feet, then kicked Skyfire again and swore, which did absolutely nothing except to make his voice echo, strained and vicious, off the mountainside. He gripped his staff all the harder and stood there making sick, hurt noises and doing nothing of any use for long minutes. 

_I can't stay here_. It was the next clear thought he could manage, and he grudgingly recognised its truth.

Starscream wouldn't go back to his aravel. There was no point. The clan wouldn’t let him leave with anything that could be valuable to them, especially not since he’d already robbed them of—of a vital member of the clan. Instead he went through the human woman’s things. Her herbs could be useful. Her knife was low quality and not of interest, but she had jerky and a water skin, too. Those, he took. Her cloak was too bloodied to be useful, but he ripped her outer dress down the seams and bundled up the long swathes of fabric. It was linen, he thought. Someone would want it. 

He took Skyfire’s knife, his jewellery. Mostly it was little things, made for him by other members of the clan, things Starscream would never popular enough to receive. Among them: an ironbark ring, harder than steel and smoother than silk; an old June’s knot, a child’s puzzle with no solution; a salve, half gone, for treating some obscure rash halla got walking through certain plants. 

Then he started walking and didn’t look back. It was almost nightfall before he made it down the mountainside to Kirkwall, the City of Chains.

A guardsman took one look at him, and then wrinkled his nose and directed him towards the alienage.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked something, please feel free to let me know!


End file.
